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PRODUCTION France

The super powers of La Nuit des enfants rois

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Antoine Charreyron’s highly ambitious 3D animated project La Nuit des enfants rois (“The Night of the Child Kings”) is shifting into a higher gear.

The motion capture shoot – which consists of filming actors equipped with sensors and then reinserting and reworking the images in the graphic set – was completed at the start of February. Now in post-production, the fantasy thriller is scheduled to be released domestically by Mars Distribution on May 22, 2010.

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Adapted from Bernard Lenteric’s eponymous 1982 novel, the film – written by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière – centres on five gifted children, who are endowed with phenomenal powers. After being brutally assaulted in New York’s Central Park, they go over to the dark side.

They take their revenge and commit a series of perfect crimes, operating as one mind and will. Young computer scientist Jimbo Farrar identifies them and fights against them. But he too is a genius and if he joins them and they become six, the world will be theirs and all will be night, the long night of the child kings.

Produced by Aton Soumache for Onyx Films (who have proven experience in motion capture after Renaissance [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Aton Soumache
interview: Christian Volckman
film profile
]
) and Marc Missonnier and Olivier Delbosc for Fidélité Films, La Nuit des enfants rois has a €22m budget.

This includes co-production support from Luxembourg’s LuxAnimation, Belgium’s Scope Pictures and France’s Studio 37. The latter have invested €8m for the theatrical, video, pay-TV and international sales rights, with Kinology acting as international seller.

The feature – whose production is helmed by Attitude Studios – also received €361,000 in backing from the Ile-de-France region and €150,000 from the National Film Centre’s new technology in production fund.

The design of the graphic setting was piloted by Bulgarian-born art director Viktor Antonov (creator of the video game Half Life 2 and winner of a Bafta), while the character graphics were created by US comic book illustrators Francisco Herrera and Humberto Ramos.

French director Charreyron previously worked on Tomb Raider and directed the second team on Babylon A.D. [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
.

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(Translated from French)

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